


Beloved

by KaerMorons



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, House of pleasure, Low Chaos, Sex Work, The Golden Cat, god this is a gay mess (tm), in which I write about the two ladies embracing in the Golden Cat and make em gay because why not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-06 07:42:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6745378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaerMorons/pseuds/KaerMorons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, it was strange to look back and think that this sort of employment had ever been anything but natural. </p><p>In which two courtesans find something in the wreckage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bearable

**Author's Note:**

> January 2017 Update: The more I try to write the continuing chapters, the more I want to facelift it. Hopefully I'll have some major remodels done on this before I start working on the Dishonored Big Bang this spring, so look out for a new prologue, alternate earlier chapters, and of course for my new work in the coming weeks. Thank you!

Sometimes, Violetta would find herself looking at the wisp of a girl weeping in a corner of the room and wonder whoever could lie to a face like that and say that Dunwall would suit her, or that her soft curves and delicate hands would be useful anywhere but the Cat. To imagine Sabine with her amber locks and doe eyes sorting through whale flesh was almost as painful as imagining the look that would be on Morgan Pendleton’s face when he saw her for the first time.

The other girls would chime cheerfully to Sabine during the few morning ablutions or hasty late-night meals between clients that had passed in the last few days, but the newcomer seemed to be interested in little more than silence. They were lucky if she so much as sniffled, or daintily picked a morsel of food off of someone else’s plate. It didn’t surprise anyone much - the farm girls were usually like this for the first few days, but soon enough Madame Prudence coaxed them into functioning. Each one of them had seen it happen a hundred times before, some to themselves as well. 

Sometimes, it was strange to look back and think that this sort of employment had ever been anything but natural. 

Not one of the girls ever thought to comment on the irony that they all still lounged in the Ivory Room when there were no guests to use it, in just the same state of dress that they would have worn had there been a Pendleton or a Boyle or a High Overseer in the room with them. Violetta was often of the notion that it was coping, that attaching fond memories in places like this would be escapism at some point, but the real truth of it was that the attic was blazing hot, just like the rest of the building. The cool breeze that carried the sounds of the river and the city was the only refuge, and the feeling of it playfully tugging at her hair was what drew Violetta to drape herself on the windowsill, absorbing the calm of a city lit with the eerie combination of whale oil and moonlight. 

It was just Louila and Sabine with her then, the others all off at the fish pond or seeing to some last stragglers yet to stumble out into the street. Sometimes, the sound carried in quiet moments like this, but with Louila’s voice carrying and Marie’s harp a few rooms over, it was nothing unbearable - though few things were truly, deeply unbearable, and Violetta knew all of them by name. She wondered how many Sabine knew. 

“Really, you should count yourself lucky,” Louila was speaking casually from her seat on the bed where she had been entertaining the Captain of the City Watch thirty minutes before. Sabine sat beside her, with downcast eyes and the hint of a pout on her pretty lips. “One look at a dying whale and you’d be begging to work here again. You’re safer here, isn’t that right, Violet?”

It was too easy to nod her head, to smile as if she didn’t remember the raw strips of skin still healing around Betty’s wrists, of the angry welts left on Louila’s back after some of the regulars left, of the sight of Magnolia crying for help through the blood trailing from her mouth and eyes. 

“Much safer,” Violetta replied, with a soft smile that barely held Sabine’s attention for a second. “Madame Prudence will tell you as much. As would any girl here.”

Louila was about ready to continue with her speech when Helena pushed through the door, her favorite skirt in one hand with a huge tear down the side. Sabine seemed to hardly noticed Louila’s exit, nor her hasty promise to have fruit and sausage sent up, saying they may as well make an occasion of it. The girl hardly shifted when the door shut, leaving only the sound of the wind through the empty halls and the very first beginnings of sunrise that turned the dark sky grey.

It was a long moment of silence, which Violet took to study the woman in front of her fully. Beyond the comely face and the big eyes, there were soft freckles spotting her skin, which was tanned from sunshine beyond a place like Gristol from what she could tell. The robe that someone had the decency to wrap around her covered the plainest of plainclothes, though the way she wore that much made Violetta flush with some semblance of shame for the first time in a while. 

Only when Sabine meet her eyes did she realize the amount that she was staring, and her quick glance away did little good. It was her turn to be examined, but the gaze of a silent woman was nothing compared to the hunger and lust in the wandering gaze and the restless hands of the only men she had ever known. 

She heard Sabine move before she looked up to see her, and it was with ease that Violetta moved aside to make room for her on the windowsill. It seemed as if hours could have passed in the moment that Violet watched Sabine watch Dunwall, and it was long before the former processed that she was seeing it for perhaps the first time, with the way that the dulled wonderment in her eyes still made the light reflect back tenfold upon her face.

“Where did you come from?” Violet’s voice was soft as she asked, hoping to gently break the silence. 

Sabine turned to answer at first, but her gaze turned again outside, across the river, where the faintest outline of a whaling ship could be seen in the distance. “Cullero, in Serkonos.” Her voice was feeble at first, but the lilting cadence of it grew almost amused as she spoke. “This place isn’t what I expected.”

“Dunwall?” Violetta followed her gaze out across the skyline, searching for what it is that was so strange about the only city she herself had ever known. 

“The Golden Cat,” Sabine corrected. “I thought all of you would be more… Upset.”

Violetta couldn’t stop the pursing of her lips. “Next to none of us take this job by choice, that much you know, but you learn quickly.” Leaning her head back, she looked back across the room, yet to be cleaned with disheveled sheets and small tokens accidentally forgotten in a rush: a handkerchief, a coin, a sock, a wristwatch. “How to act, how to feign compassion, how to put a pretty face on underneath your rouge and take your mind somewhere different.” With a soft shifting, she examined the soft curve of Sabine’s cheek again, the perceived innocence of all of her, and for the briefest of moments she wanted to hide her away from the reality she would face with the rising of the sun.

Sabine only looked back with those eyes, and when Violetta touched her arm, she just barely leaned into the touch. Her pity for Sabine in that moment overshadowed the last bit of rationale, and as the sun broke over the horizon, she lied to her, sweeter than she ever had to any patron to walk through those doors.

“It isn’t quite unbearable.”


	2. Caress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was hard to ignore the smears of makeup across Violetta’s cheek, or the way that she wiped against the bruises crossing from the side of her neck down across her collarbone. It was harder to ignore the deep, curdling fear that left little room for anything else in Sabine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which the sun rises on an unfortunately similar world

Cullero was earthy and grounded, warm with the smell of soft loam and sea air, and the smell of her childhood still seemed to cling to Sabine’s hair and skin when she grew warm. Cullero was still in her blood.

When Sabine closed her eyes to the smoke and electricity of Dunwall, even for just a moment, it was as if she was back at the docks with her father, and he was pressing her hat into her hands as sailors and merchants called from above. He was concrete, and unmovable, and with dirt smeared on his cheek from a morning of labor, but too trusting all the same as he turned to leave her. He would never know the fate that he had sentenced his only daughter to.

Violetta had come to wake her when all the others had gone, and the beginnings of unintelligible murmurs and noise began drifting up to the stiff cots of the attic room with the heat. It was hard to ignore the smears of makeup across Violetta’s cheek, or the way that she wiped against the bruises crossing from the side of her neck down across her collarbone. It was harder to ignore the deep, curdling fear that left little room for anything else in Sabine.

“No one’s entertaining anyone down in the basement,” Violetta offered when Sabine sat up, shedding the thin layer of blankets to stand. “I figured you would want a bath, and some clean clothes.” In her hands were stockings with the smallest of runs at the thighs, something resembling a corset, a skirt, and an undeniable invitation into another life entirely.

Sabine found herself nodding in the absence of words and following the confidence that Violetta made apparent in a strong nod and an indication to follow.

When they passed through down to the bath, where steam rose up and warped the reflections across the water, Violetta didn’t hesitate a moment before undressing, folding her clothes neatly to rest with Sabine’s on one of the plush benches around the edge of the water. 

It had never quite struck her how young Violet was until she turned to face Sabine in a moment of expectant silence, too thin and too naked and too comely. She couldn’t have been older than twenty, perhaps much younger in the way that she pushed her hair away from her eyes in a moment of almost modest embarrassment. 

“You must be looking at the bruises,” Violetta chimed softly after a moment of quiet, motioning to the small line of purpling marks that stretched down toward her breast. “They’re nothing. You shouldn’t worry about it.”

At that, Sabine snapped her gaze away and shook her head, swiftly going about undressing to hide the blush rising to her cheeks as Violetta disturbed the surface of the water with a small laugh.

“You act as if you are the first person ever to look at me.” A smile curled good-naturedly at Violetta’s lips as she backed up into the water, maintaining Sabine’s gaze with an almost mocking intensity as she watched her wade into the bath.

“I wasn’t - Not like -”

Violet’s voice was still mirthful when she approached her. “I know, I know. Come and let me wash your hair.”

There was a coarse bar of soap in an alcove somewhere, and before Sabine could protest Violet’s hands were washing a long journey’s worth of grime from her back, her arms, the long curls of auburn hair. The smoke continued to rise and curl so that it seemed that all she could see was the white shrouding them both, and all she could manage to feel was the gentle caress of Violetta’s hands through her hair. It felt childish, almost, but all the same Sabine found herself drawn to the warmth of her touch. She hoped Violet didn’t feel her shiver in the heat of the room.

“The madame wanted to see you when you finish,” Violetta explained, wading through the water to move next to Sabine. Apparently noticing the immediate change in her features, Violetta caressed Sabine’s arm with a casualty and ease that Sabine hadn’t expected. “She won’t send you to anyone today. Rest easy.” 

Sabine nodded at that, and when Violetta pushed a lock of hair out of Sabine’s face, she went so far as to chance a smile before she took the soap and returned the favor. The simpleness of the task was rivaled only by the intimacy of it, and the realization that one of the few girls here that she didn’t mistrust was as good as a stranger.

“You never told me how old you were,” Sabine mused as she worked out tension from the hollow of Violetta’s shoulder blades. “Or where you came from, if I can ask things like that.”

Stretching as she leaned back, Violet’s black hair just brushed against Sabine’s shoulder. “Nineteen, last time I can remember counting.” Moving away from Sabine, she tipped her head back again to rinse water from her hair. “My mother worked here long before Madame Prudence, or Madame Josephine before her. She told me I had a brother, a gang leader out on the streets that got away when he was young,” With a look over her shoulder, she smiled sadly. “I wasn’t so lucky. I was fifteen when I started. Younger than you, yes?”

“Not by much,” Sabine answered, as Violetta turned around and began wringing water from her hair. “Hardly by anything. I was sixteen in the Month of Earth.”

“The beginning is hard, but it isn’t terrible. There was a visiting group of dignitaries from Moreley when I first started, and they gave me a boy hardly older than myself.” Glancing down to examine her hands beneath the water, Violetta continued. “A few minutes and nothing you couldn’t deal with. He was more embarrassed than I was.”

Even talk of what was to come turned Sabine’s stomach, no matter how many of the girls of the Cat reassured her that it was only a job, that she’d find it to be decent after a time, that there were Tyvian wines and fresh foods and plague elixirs, and perhaps that was worth twenty minutes servicing someone. There was a panic deep in her stomach that made her long for everything she had ever heard about a whale as it was dying and to have her hands stained with the blood of a leviathan instead of the sweat of a stranger, because what was the stench of death when compared with all of this-

Violetta must have seen the panic clouding in her eyes, and before either of them could considered it she had gathered Sabine in her arms and held her tightly, the first jarring moment of skin against skin forgotten as Sabine pressed her face into Violetta’s shoulder and cried for everything she had left and everything that she had found. Sabine found herself drawn into her warmth again as Violetta rubbed her back and tugged her hair back from her face with hands as gentle as a mother’s, but perhaps they were only practiced fingers mimicking a lover’s caress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "hello naughty children it's gay courtesan bath time"  
> \- actual text I sent when I wrote this
> 
> i'm still at jessakaldwin.tumblr.com and I'm still looking for good songs to complement this fic! i've only listened to Susanne Sundfor's "The Brothel" for three days now please save me
> 
>  
> 
> ~~if you fanmix this I'll surrender my firstborn to you~~


	3. Wraith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She kept feeling again Sabine’s hands back in the bath, slipping from the ends of her hair and down to her shoulder blades without prompting. There had been timid kindness in her hands, but something else, too. Violetta couldn't quite place it, but it set her cheeks burning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which the girl reveals herself
> 
> (also, in which I apologize for letting this poor fic go unupdated for so long)

Madam Prudence was an ugly woman, with makeup caked in clumps across her face in a desperate, sad attempt to hide the fact that she was no longer beautiful. It was her hands that upset Violetta the most - hooked claws of sagging skin and yellowed nails, hands that she was sure had once been put to work in a place not too unlike the Cat but were now as desolate and sad as the rest of her, testimony to a decaying body and spirit. It was in Prudence’s hands that Violetta saw her future, if she had one, and that was what frightened her most of all.

She pitied Sabine, who had sought her out on Prudence’s behalf after whatever sort of unsavory questions had been posed of her during her meeting with the Madame. They had found each other in a quiet space, beneath the great wrought iron intricacies of one of the sitting areas. For a moment she seemed ready to embrace Violetta as she had minutes before, forgetting that anyone else could possibly exist, but all Sabine seemed able to muster was a small squeeze of her hand. 

“She wants to talk with you.” Sabine’s voice was hardly a whisper. “Said it’s important.”

“Fine, but what did she say to you?” Anything that Prudence had to say to her would pale in comparison to whatever Sabine had just went through alone. The thought of Prudence looking hawkishly down at Sabine, who was promised a new life but was only given this semblance of one, who would sign whatever Prudence pushed in front of her with a shaky hand. 

“I’ll tell you. Later, I mean.” Sabine was still hushed as she gripped at her hand tightly for one last, long moment. The flash of fear in those brown eyes made Violet’s chest tight. “Just go. She’s impatient.” 

The sensation of replacing Sabine’s company with the Madame’s left a foul taste in Violet’s mouth.

“The Pendletons trusted me with a task like this for a reason,” Prudence droned, pacing around that tiny office of hers, toying with the power that she had over Violetta, perhaps savoring it. “They knew what sort of business I keep, and that I know how to keep quiet.”

A business that takes advantage of girls like Sabine, which you keep quiet enough about, a part of her echoed, though she dared not voice anything so openly brash. What use was there in criticizing the woman that could make her life worse with a few moments of pen to ledger, or in condemning the business that kept her alive?

The image of Sabine kept flickering before her, slumped shoulders trying to hide something not quite there, long auburn hair plastered down the back of a graceful neck. She kept feeling again Sabine’s hands back in the bath, slipping from the ends of her hair and down to her shoulder blades without prompting. There had been timid kindness in her hands, but something else, too, and - 

“Violetta? Am I interrupting something?” Prudence’s voice, grating and impatient, broke off Violetta’s thoughts, perhaps for the better. 

“No, of course not. I’m… Please continue.”

The wilting look she gained for that half-answer was worse than Violetta had expected, and it was all she could do to avoid visibly recoiling, or turning tail and running. Prudence was never anyone’s ally, it seemed, and though it was likely that she was in Violet’s position twenty years before, she never seemed to understand humility. 

“Truly, Violet, I am trying to help you with this.” The Madame moved from behind her desk, drawing a hand against the windowsill as she approached Violetta with an appraising smile.   
The cold contact of Prudence’s hand against her jaw was sudden, but both of them remained steady, unyielding. Prudence drew closer, and her breath carried words cooler than Violetta expected. 

“Both of us know what sort of position you are in,” Prudence said, as if they were old friends. “Four - no, five years of work have yielded less than it should have. You’ve seen friends killed by sickness and this plague. You still work unsavory hours with unsavory guests.” 

The shift in the set of Violetta’s jaw did not go unnoticed, she was sure. 

“Do me a favor, and we’ll see what I can do,” Prudence promised, and for once she sounded sincere. Her hand dropped from Violetta’s face as she moved to page through the guest ledger casually. “Louila needs a break, and you know about dear Claire’s… indisposition.”

Indisposition was a difficult term, yielding too many thoughts of sad women and sad children. Violetta nodded slowly, still wary. “May I ask what the favor entails?” 

Prudence nodded simply, as if she wasn’t taking pleasure in the entire exchange. “You may. It has to do with the child, locked in the attic beside your quarters.” A flash of rheumy eyes captured and held Violetta’s gaze. “What do you know of her?”

The question was loaded. Violet knew that she had raven-black hair and dark circles under her eyes from so many weeks of tears and no sleep. Betty had seen her escape, that day Morgan had argued with her and came strolling down the hall without his clothes to yell at Prudence, drunk and raving. She was like a wraith, she had claimed, with something like fear in what looked like the eyes of nobility. There were nightmares, no doubt of those who came to abduct her, and she screamed at someone to stop him or yelled for her mother. There was something else, too, when the girl sang snatches of song not too similar to the humming of runes, but not too different, either. Amy, or something. The lost child.

“Next to nothing,” Violetta said, shaking her head. “Is she some niece of the Pendletons?” 

“Good,” Prudence said. “Better than if you thought you knew something. You’re smart enough, Violet, I’m certain you will figure it out soon enough.

“You’ll bring up her meals in the mornings and afternoons in lieu of myself. Do try to get her to like you - perhaps she won’t try to climb out windows if she decides you are her friend. Heaven knows I’m beyond hope with her.”

With a short sigh of finality, Prudence pressed a key into her palm.  
“Her name is Emily.”

\---

Holding the key at her side was like holding a secret as she watched the clock tick toward noontime. 

The Cat was empty of any patrons besides the regulars, those who could come at any time of day or night and be assured of a clean room and whatever they desired - which most often came down to Betty, Louila, Claire, or Rosemarie. As evening came, it was the merchants and the captains and the occasional Watchman that came through the doors. It was like gambling, or party games with all but one pistol empty, but the elixir kept coming in little red phials and so did the patrons, and with them the rats. 

It was easiest when they wanted her to be someone else. Empress Kaldwin, the drunk ones would joke, but she would pull her hair back and put on airs just barely enough to be ridiculous. But she became others, too - old lost sweethearts or ex-lovers that spurned them or cruel but familiar names of nobility. 

She wasn’t herself again until she had to return to her attic room and crowd in between Marie and Tara in the early hours of morning. They saw to one another well enough, brushing tangles from hair and wiping smears off of reddened cheeks, and Violetta had to return to her identity again. Every night, she had to forgive herself, and tonight would be no different.

The tray waiting to be brought up from the attic was simple enough - Serkonan blood sausage, Tyvian pear, a Morley apple - and it was an uneventful walk up toward the attic level. There were voices drifting down the hall, and Violetta was certain that one was Sabine’s, but the task at hand outweighed whatever emotion it was that knotted in the pit of her stomach at the thought of her.  
The room was darkened and musty from the lack of air and use, and the large cloth draped over where the window should have been showed off only dust in the warm pools of lantern light. Emily’s shadow caught Violetta’s eye first, thrown against the wall and distorted into something bigger and more sinister than what she was.

Moving forward, she spotted the girl herself. Wraith had been an appropriate descriptor, as the child was all angles and unbrushed wisps of dark hair in dirtied white playclothes. She was focused intensely on drawing, as if it was all that mattered in the world to her. Perhaps it was. 

All movement in the shadows stopped as the door closed behind with an echoing click.

Violetta cleared her throat and forced a few meager steps forward. Dark eyes flickered, and the child was fixated upon her, looking her up and down yet somehow without hatred or complete understanding. 

“I’ve come to bring your lunch,” Violetta offered, holding out the food. “You’d do best to eat.”

“You aren’t Madame Prudence. Tell me your name.” The command of her daintily-spoken words were enough indication of her status as any. Emily’s eyes seemed to narrow at Violetta’s gaze, unused to people looking her in the eyes. 

“Violetta,” she answered. With another step forward, she knelt to place the tray before Emily and sat across from her. “Violet, if you like. And yours?”

The girl nodded pensively, as if her name meant a great deal. “My name’s Emily. But it used to be longer, and someone would yell it whenever I walked into a room.” For a moment, she looked back to her drawing - a yellow cat arched along a semblance of the scrolling wrought iron sign outside. “Why isn’t the Madame here? Where did she go?”

Violetta shifted, resting her weight half on a hand as she stretched her legs out to the side. “She’s a busy woman, working hard. I’ll be bringing your meals for the time being, aside from your dinner.” Emily’s brows scrunched upward in a quizzical look, and Violetta had to forcibly chase the blush from her cheeks. Why would anyone keep a child in a place like this? “I work evenings, you see.”

“The Madame told me what you do,” Emily said matter-of-factly, picking up the apple to examine it. Violetta’s breath caught in her throat.“She says the ladies here are like princesses, and men come to admire you.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Violetta answered, again shifting her weight under the child’s intense gaze. “But it isn’t always so glamorous.”

“I thought so,” Emily said, with a motion toward the still-fresh bruises along Violet’s collarbone. “Sometimes there are strange noises at night, but I’m not scared. How old are you? You’re younger than anyone else I’ve seen here.”

“Only nineteen,” she answered, worrying at her lip. “But I’m not the youngest. Sabine is sixteen, and Helena’s a year older than that. It’s been five years since I came.”

“You all live here, don’t you? You never leave, just like me, but I wish I could go downstairs like you. All of the plants are so pretty, and I want to draw the view out the windows.”

“Things aren’t safe now, but it used to be different,” Violetta said. “When I first came, we could leave when we wanted. The streets around here are dangerous in times like this. It’s better that both of us stay hidden here while we can.”

“What about your family? Don’t they miss you?”

Violetta shook her head. “I haven’t had a family for a long time, after I lost my mother. I never knew my father.”

“Me neither,” Emily answered, expression flashing with something like pity, though she kept from elaborating. She sniffed daintily, attempting to mask the wetness of her eyes. “I won’t be here long. Someone will come for me, and I won’t have to hide ever again, and things will be like they used to.”

Curiosity pricked at Violetta’s mind. “Why are you here, Emily? Did anyone tell you?”

No amount of dignified sniffles could mask Emily’s tears now, and when Violetta reached out toward her, the little girl’s cheek was resting against her palm in a moment.

“They killed my mother,” she whispered, eyes wavering with tears as she met Violetta’s gaze. “They took me here, the two twin men with dark hair. They say that he’s dead too, but I don’t believe them, because he promised that he would always keep me safe, and I believe him.”

“... Who promised? What’s his name?”

Emily rubbed at her eyes, the fear and timidity giving way to something red and angry.

“Corvo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, a third chapter! This has been sitting in my drive for a long time, so I finally decided to finish it off and post it. It's a little longer, as a consolation after being silent for so long. More edits to come soon, as well as more chapters.
> 
> As always, I'm jessakaldwin on tumblr and would love your feedback!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for picking this up! All comments and criticism are deeply appreciated, especially since this is in a state of un-beta'd-ness.
> 
> If you are interested in getting updates on new chapters, come find me on tumblr as jessakaldwin !
> 
> Hope you enjoyed.


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